William Thompson (1819 - 1890) - Archbishop of York
This is from that marvellous publication "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Archbishop Thompson was the person who opened the Church of England Cemetery at St Mary's, Walkley in 1880, and as the article shows, he was instrumental in changing the attitudes of the "working men of Sheffield" to the Church of England in particular, and religion in general. I have decided to use the whole article rather than the part that refers to Sheffield and the bishopric of York as I feel in this way people will get a far more rounded picture of this clergyman.
"Thomson, William (1819–1890), archbishop of York, born at Whitehaven on 11
February 1819, was the eldest son of John Thompson of Kelswick House, near that
town. Both his parents were of Scottish extraction. His mother, Isabella, was
maternally descended from Patrick Home of Polwarth, and was related to the earls
of Marchmont. His father migrated to Whitehaven in 1813 to join the business of
his uncle, Walter Thompson. John Thompson became director of the local bank and
chairman of the Cleator Moor Hematite Iron Company, the first hematite company
formed in the north of England. He died at Bishopthorpe Palace on 18 April 1878,
aged eighty-seven (West Cumberland and Whitehaven Herald, 25 April and 2 May
1878).
Education and early career
William was educated at Shrewsbury School, entering at the age of eleven. During
his schooldays he preferred science to classics, although at Shrewsbury he had
no opportunity of following his bent. On 2 June 1836 he matriculated from
Queen's College, Oxford. He was elected a scholar in the following year and a
fellow in 1840. He graduated BA in that year and MA in 1844.
While an undergraduate, Thompson devoted himself chiefly to the study of logic,
somewhat to the detriment of his work for the schools, and before he graduated
he had practically completed a treatise entitled ‘Outlines of the laws of
thought’. This was published in 1842, and brought him his earliest reputation.
The germ of his work, he states, he derived from Christian von Wolff's
Philosophia rationalis and Daniel Albert Wyttenbach's Praecepta philosophiae
logicae. Thompson's treatment of his topic was remarkably clear, and he arranged
his matter with great skill. The merits of the treatise brought him into
communication with many authorities on the subject, including Sir William
Hamilton, Professor De Morgan, James McCosh, Philip Henry, Lord Mahon (later
fifth Earl Stanhope), and William Whewell. From these, and especially from Sir
William Hamilton, Thompson received many suggestions which induced him to make
considerable alterations in the later editions of his work. Thompson's
‘Outlines’ in some respects anticipated John Stuart Mill's System of Logic, and
was long used extensively as a textbook.
Soon after the publication of his treatise in 1842, Thompson was ordained
deacon, and left Oxford to devote himself to clerical work. He took priest's
orders in 1843, and in the next four years served curacies, first at St
Nicholas, Guildford, Surrey (1844–6), and afterwards at Cuddesdon, near Oxford,
under the nominal vicar, Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford. About this time
he dropped the ‘p’ from his name, thinking ‘Thomson’ less plebian; he was mocked
for this for the rest of his life, especially at Queen's.
Thomson's growing reputation as a logician led Queen's College in 1847 to recall
him to Oxford to act as college tutor. In this capacity he did much to retrieve
the standing of the college. Indefatigable in his attention to its affairs, he
filled the office not merely of tutor, but also of chaplain and dean. In 1852 he
became junior bursar, and in 1854 bursar. At the same time he was recognized in
the university as a preacher of power. In 1848 he was appointed select preacher,
and in 1853 he was chosen Bampton lecturer. Taking as his subject the atoning
work of Christ, he dwelt on the expiatory character of the atonement, and his
sermons constitute a very complete exposition of that theory of the purpose of
Christ's incarnation. They attracted great attention, and St Mary's was more
crowded than it had been since the time of Newman (The Times, 7 June 1853).
University and college reform
In the matter of academic organization Thomson was strongly in favour of reform.
He disapproved of the principles on which college fellowships were filled. At
that period they were nearly all confined to persons born in particular
districts, and at Queen's College, contrary to the statutes, elections were
restricted to natives of Cumberland and Westmorland. In conjunction with another
fellow, George Henry Sacheverell Johnson, Thomson endeavoured to remedy this
state of things. In 1849 the fellows rejected the candidature of Goldwin Smith,
afterwards regius professor of modern history, and elected instead a native of
Cumberland whom they had previously removed from the list of expectants on
account of his insufficient attainments. Thomson appealed against this action to
Lord John Russell, the prime minister; as a result of this and other
representations a royal commission was appointed in 1850 to inquire into the
constitution and revenues of the university, and in 1854 a second commission was
empowered to revise the statutes of the university and of the colleges and
halls. The proposed innovations alarmed the more conservative members of the
university, and several attacks on the commissions appeared. In reply to one of
these, entitled The Case of Queen's College (1854), by the Revd John Barrow,
Thomson penned An Open College Best for All (1854). This pamphlet was generally
considered the ablest contribution to the reformers' side of the controversy,
and was much quoted in the parliamentary debates.
Marriage and provost of Queen's
In 1855 Thomson married Zoë, daughter of James Henry Skene, British consul at
Aleppo, and his wife, Rhalon Rizo-Rangabe, a Greek beauty of aristocratic
descent. With her he had five daughters and four sons, including the
‘spycatcher’ Sir Basil Home Thomson and Jocelyn Home Thomson. As a result of his
marriage, Thomson lost his fellowship; he was presented by the crown to the
rectory of All Souls, Marylebone. Within a few months, however, on the death of
the Revd John Fox, on 11 August, he was elected provost of Queen's College and
resigned his living. As provost he steadily pursued his liberalizing policy. He
advocated the enlargement of the curriculum of university studies, and, with a
view to aiding scientific study, was one of the projectors of the university
museum, which was afterwards erected in the university parks. Outside Oxford he
accepted preferment, whereby he extended his reputation as a preacher who
appealed to the intellect rather than to the emotions of his audience. In 1858
he was elected to the preachership of Lincoln's Inn, and in 1859 he was
appointed chaplain-in-ordinary to the queen.
Thomson's theological position was conspicuously defined during the controversy
that followed the publication in 1860 of Essays and Reviews. In his ardour for
reform at Oxford he had associated himself with Benjamin Jowett and the newer
school of broad-churchmen, and in 1855 he had contributed a paper, ‘Crime and
its excuses’, to Oxford Essays. He was to have been one of the contributors to
Essays and Reviews, but failed to get his paper to the printer in time (happily
for him, in view of the events of the next two years). However, when Essays and
Reviews was published, in 1860, Thomson led the orthodox campaign against it,
editing in reply Aids to Faith (1861). This volume included contributions from
Edward Harold Browne, Frederick Charles Cook, Charles John Ellicott, and Henry
Longueville Mansel, besides an article of his own, ‘The death of Christ’, which
was substantially a restatement of his Bampton lectures in more popular form.
Aids to Faith was the most substantial general answer to Essays and Reviews, and
possesses historical value as a clear statement of the orthodox position at that
period. Almost at the same time Thomson was engaged, as one of a committee of
ten, in preparing the Speaker's Commentary, to which he contributed an
‘Introduction to the synoptical gospels’, probably the best treatise on the
subject then extant.
Archbishop of York
In the same year (1861), on the translation of C. T. Baring to the see of
Durham, Thomson, whose established fame as a preacher marked him out for
promotion, was appointed Baring's successor in the see of Gloucester and
Bristol. Within ten months of his consecration, however, Charles Thomas Longley,
the archbishop of York, was translated to Canterbury, and, though so junior a
bishop, Thomson was appointed Longley's successor, A. C. Tait having declined.
This rapid advancement, coupled with public knowledge of his ambivalent role in
the Essays and Reviews affair, excited envy and distrust among his clerical
colleagues. He was enthroned at York Minster on 25 February 1863, and entered on
an archiepiscopate which extended over twenty-eight years. The new archbishop
was a very tall man (and wore a size eight hat). He was imposing in full
episcopal dress, with long, bushy hair and side-whiskers. He and his wife were
known as a handsome couple. He was vain about his appearance and had a
reputation for vulgarity. He signed a hotel register: ‘His Grace, the Lord
Archbishop of York’. None the less Thomson performed the various duties of his
office with success. From the commencement of his archiepiscopate he realized
that, to keep its place in English life, the English church must show itself
able to meet modern needs. He was active in his support of diocesan conferences
and church congresses, and showed a keen interest in social, economic, and
political questions, together with a just discernment of their relation to
ecclesiastical matters. He made his first public appearance as archbishop at a
meeting of the Castle Howard Reformatory in 1863, and from that time onwards he
was present at every large public meeting in the diocese, whether its object was
the amendment of the criminal law, the amelioration of the state of the poor,
the encouragement of education, or the cultivation of art or science.
In 1862 the increase of population in the north of England had surpassed the
resources of the church, and in the large towns the numbers of the clergy were
quite inadequate for the needs of the people. Sheffield, for example, had only
one church for 8000 inhabitants, and that town, like all its neighbours, was a
centre of anti-clerical feeling. Thomson from the first set himself to meet
these difficulties. In 1865, at the church congress at York, he suggested the
addition of a working men's meeting to the ordinary programme. In 1869 he gained
the attention of the workers of Sheffield, who had hitherto treated the clergy
with scorn, by a speech defending the English church from the charge that it was
a useless institution maintained at an undue cost to the nation. This speech was
followed by others of like tenor. The population of Sheffield at once
acknowledged the force of his argument, and their attitude of hostility or
indifference to all that concerned the church was converted into one of devoted
esteem for himself and his aims. His artisan admirers subscribed to give him a
present of cutlery in 1883 (Yorkshire Post, 13 June 1883). His success in
Sheffield was only typical of what he achieved throughout the labour centres of
northern England. During the latter part of his life no man equalled him in the
affections of the working classes, and it is difficult to overestimate the
effect of his influence in strengthening the position of the English church in
the northern province. He was one of the first English clergymen who, while not
himself a socialist, recognized the good elements that went to the making of
socialism. When he dissented from opinions which to most people of the time
seemed revolutionary, he did so without bitterness and with full allowance for
differences in the point of view from which the question was approached.
A church disciplinarian
From the time of his elevation to the bench of bishops Thomson took an important
part in ecclesiastical legislation. One of the first problems that engaged his
attention was the reconstitution of the final ecclesiastical court of appeal. He
was thus involved in a prolonged controversy with Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of
Oxford, who was ultimately victorious. At the outset in 1871 Thomson
successfully opposed Wilberforce's proposal to reduce the bishops to the
position of assessors in the judicial committee of the privy council. But in
1873 a clause was introduced into the Supreme Court of Judicature Act removing
the episcopal members from the judicial committee altogether, and, though two
years later they reappeared as assessors, they did not regain their judicial
functions. In 1871, with John Jackson (1811–1885), bishop of London, Thomson
introduced the Dilapidations Act, intended to compel the clergy to keep their
residences and church buildings in repair. It was not, however, very happily
framed, and some years later was condemned by a committee of the House of
Commons. In 1874 he joined his friend Tait, by then archbishop of Canterbury,
another disciplinarian of liberal origin, in introducing the Public Worship
Regulation Bill. The measure was intended in part to check the growth of
ritualistic practices, and in its original form largely increased the authority
of the bishops; the extensive modifications it received in its passage through
parliament, however, partially destroyed the effect that its framers had in
view. Gladstone and the Tractarians vigorously opposed the bill, and the act led
to a number of notorious imprisonments. In 1883 Thomson supported Tait's motion
for the appointment of a commission on ecclesiastical courts. But, though he
signed the general report of the commission, he joined with a minority in
issuing a dissentient report, and was the author of a severe criticism on the
work of the commission which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for January 1884.
A strict disciplinarian, Thomson came conspicuously forward in 1887 as the
champion of ecclesiastical order. He had refused to admit Canon Tristram's
election as a proctor in convocation, on the ground that he was not duly
qualified. In consequence he was required to show cause in the court of queen's
bench why Tristram's election should not be accepted. Thomson conducted his case
in person, and, appearing before the court on 28 November 1887, took exception
to the court's jurisdiction. His pleading was successful, and the ability he
displayed led Lord Coleridge, who tried the case, to remark that, had Thomson
been a lawyer, he would have been the second person in the kingdom instead of
the third.
In 1888 the Clergy Discipline (Immorality) Bill was introduced into parliament.
It was materially altered in committee, and Thomson, disapproving of it in its
amended form, hastened to London to oppose it on the third reading in the House
of Lords. He pointed out that it tended to increase the cost of prosecution, and
at the same time prevented an appeal to a higher court on matters of fact; the
bill, after passing the third reading, was allowed to drop. In the conduct of
the ecclesiastical affairs of his province Thomson displayed both strength and
tact. Though he had been accused of narrowness and intolerance, he earned the
gratitude of people of opinions widely different from his own, and from each
other's, by interposing his authority to shield them from petty annoyance. The
only clerical prosecution for doctrine or ritual which he promoted took place in
1869, when he instituted proceedings for heresy against the Revd Charles Voysey,
rector of Healaugh in Yorkshire, author of The Sling and the Stone, who, among
other things, had published a sermon entitled Is every Statement in the Bible
about our Heavenly Father Strictly True? The case was finally decided against
Voysey on 11 February 1870. The result did not, however, affect the personal
friendship which had existed for many years between Voysey and the archbishop.
In the judicial committee of the privy council Thomson's voice was frequently
raised for toleration, and when, on 16 December 1863, Robert Gray (1809–1872),
the bishop of Cape Town, pronounced sentence of deposition against John William
Colenso, Thomson warned him of the illegality of his proceedings. On another
occasion, in the case of William James Early Bennett, he laid down the maxim
that the question to consider in cases of difference is not whether a person's
views are in strict accord with the teaching of their church, but whether their
views are so discordant as to render toleration impossible.
Final years
Prior to the appointment of Archdeacon Crossthwaite in 1880 as bishop of
Beverley, Thomson had no suffragan. He always dispatched the business of the see
with punctuality, but the labour and anxiety gradually undermined his health and
compounded the diabetes which affected him from about 1880. He was taken ill
while boating at Keswick in September 1890 and died on Christmas day 1890 in
Bishopthorpe Palace. He was buried in the churchyard of Bishopthorpe, near York.
The pall was borne by working men of Sheffield. His wife, Zoë, died on 30
December 1913 and was buried with her husband.
E. I. Carlyle, rev. H. C. G. Matthew
Sources H. Kirk Smith, William Thomson, archbishop of York (1958) · The Guardian
(31 Dec 1890) · Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (26 Dec 1890) · I. Ellis,
Seven against Christ: a study of ‘Essays and reviews’ (1980) · CGPLA Eng. &
Wales (1891)
Archives Borth. Inst., official corresp. and papers; papers relating to him and
his family · York Minster Library, corresp. and papers | BL, corresp. with W. E.
Gladstone, Add. MSS 44377–44390, passim · Borth. Inst., corresp. with second
Viscount Halifax · Durham Cath. CL, letters to J. B. Lightfoot · LPL, corresp.
with E. W. Benson · LPL, corresp. with Baroness Burdett-Coutts · LPL, corresp.
with A. C. Tait · NL Wales, letters to George Stovin Venables · U. Nott. L.,
corresp. mainly with J. E. Denison
Likenesses Onslow Ford, bust, 1886 · W. W. Ouless, oils, exh. RA 1886,
Bishopthorpe Palace, York · Ape [C. Pellegrini], chromolithograph caricature,
NPG; repro. in VF (24 June 1871) · Bassano, photograph, NPG [see illus.] ·
Dalziel, woodcut, BM · W. Holl, stipple and line engraving (after photograph),
NPG · C. Johnson, portrait (after W. W. Ouless), Queen's College, Oxford · W. D.
Keyworth, marble bust, Sheffield parish church · Lock & Whitfield, woodburytype
photograph, NPG; repro. in T. Cooper, Men of mark: a gallery of contemporary
portraits (1878) · Mason & Co., carte-de-visite, NPG · Moira & Haigh, carte-de-visite,
NPG · D. J. Pound, stipple and line engraving (after photograph by Mayall),
repro. in Illustrated News of the World · J. Watkins, carte-de-visite, NPG
Wealth at death £55,929 2s. 4d.: probate, 23 Jan 1891, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
Sources
"The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography".
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